Thank You

Error.

President Obama studiously avoided using the word "permanent" last month when he invited Republicans in Congress to extend the Bush tax cuts for middle-income Americans. This opened the president to criticism from Republicans that the proposed extension was merely an election-year gimmick -- prelude to across-the-board tax increases should he win a second term.

But the 2012 Democratic Party platform seemingly employs a synonym for "permanent" in its discussion of middle-class tax cuts. Under the heading "Cutting Waste, Reducing the Deficit, Asking All to Pay Their Fair Share," the platform proclaims that the party is committed to extending the middle-class tax cuts for the 98% of American families who earn less than $250,000 a year, "and we will not raise taxes on them." That phrasing strikes me as one of "permanent's" close cousins. And it is preceded by this thought: "We reinstated the tough pay-as-you-go budget rules of the 1990s so that all permanent new spending and tax cuts must now be offset by savings or revenue increases." Acknowledging that some existing tax cuts are permanent is a sea change for President Obama. He appears to be pledging never to raise taxes on the middle class.

It's always hazardous to leap to a conclusion about the true meaning of a political document written by a committee that is expert in the crafty art of vagueness. The passage could just as well mean that the Democrats will not raise taxes on the middle class during the period in which a continuation of the current Bush tax rates is in place. President Obama has been agitating for a one-year extension.

Plus, if the president is in fact calling for a permanent middle-class tax cut, then this is front-page news. But the passage is on page 38 of the 70-page platform, so one could deduce that the crafty writers did not intend the sentence to be as provocative as I find it. In a Dr. Phil-like effort to avoid a misunderstanding, I asked a spokesman at the Democratic National Committee if the sentence said what I thought it said. He promised to get back to me. I am still waiting.

THANKFULLY, THE PLATFORM'S DISCUSSION of corporate taxes is clearer -- so clear, in fact, that conservative economists at a luncheon I attended last week were happily buzzing about its endorsement of an across-the-board lower corporate tax rate, achieved in part by closing "unnecessary loopholes." To the economists, this plank suggested that if President Obama were to be re-elected, he'd have common ground on which to reach a corporate tax-reform agreement with Republicans. The thinking among the economists is that the president, if re-elected, will no longer have to fear his base and no longer will engage in the destructive back-and-forth game with the GOP of "my way or the highway."

The platform's plank on corporate-tax reduction was unexpected. Democrats gleefully have been bashing the GOP's Mitt Romney for describing corporations as "people." Massachusetts Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren was cheered by an arena full of convention delegates when she said mockingly last Wednesday: "No, Gov. Romney, corporations are not people. People have hearts."

The platform writers did not fret about the inconsistency between the party's rhetoric and the platform plank. But they certainly seem to appreciate it. Thus, if you are looking for the plank, you will find it buried on page 40.